Titanfall

[Architecture]

You have a city-specific gift card?

[Justin Leego]

It's sort of a nationwide pan-retailer gift voucher scheme.

Computer hardware stores don't tend to take part, unfortunately.

[clyde]

Spend a few games of attrition running around behind the enemy lines with a smart pistol and minion detector, taking out minions.

[Forbin]

That campaign story is pretty bad, also hard to follow given the way things are constantly shifting around.  There's no way I experienced it in order.

 

Also, why was it basically all Team Deathmatch?

[Architecture]

Capture the flag would be impossible to explain from a narrative standpoint. 

[Spenny]

Capture the flag would be impossible to explain from a narrative standpoint. 

My Field Lattice Generators disagree.

[Forbin]

Didn't Unreal Tournament once try to write a narrative for CTF?

 

Edit:  That ^

[Badfinger]

There are 15 maps (I think). Not every map is used in the campaign.

 

What I would have found interesting is having 8 maps be [First Campaign's] campaign, and the other 7 being the other guy's. Yes, that would mean rather than having a "story" if you were on the opposite side you'd just be the generic enemy, but that's what non-campaign multiplayer is anyway. Playing it out one way, and then playing it out the other way to the exact same result regardless of outcome is a disappointment. I said it was just flavor, but decent flavor before and I stand by that. But now I've played with other people trying to get through the campaign and have played parts of it up to 4-5 times. I have yet to actually watch any of the window box vignettes. They might as well not exist.

[JonCole]

At this point, the primary function of the campaign for me is playing regular missions with a lower chance of facing high-level, highly experienced enemies. I also like that part on the last mission where the dude is sticking out of his mech and shouting some stuff, then bursts through the front gate of the complex with his Titan. That looked pretty rad.

[Dewar]

At this point, the primary function of the campaign for me is playing regular missions with a lower chance of facing high-level, highly experienced enemies. I also like that part on the last mission where the dude is sticking out of his mech and shouting some stuff, then bursts through the front gate of the complex with his Titan. That looked pretty rad.

 

I didn't notice this until now. I was totally destroying in campaign mode but getting my butt kicked in regular multiplayer. That explains why.

[clyde]

I find myself playing the campaign over and over. I think that it might be because it allows me to have more familiarity when just beginning. The only maps I know well are the two that were in the beta; playing the final half of the campaign over and over gives me a familiarity with four or five new maps in the context of their assigned game-mode. This is a game about mastery for me, so being able to experience some amount of familiarity at the beginning allows me to start enjoying higher-level tactics and strategies quickly. And as stupid as the story is, the short cut-scenes that start the matches do add a little bit of sense-of-place.

Imagine how much better the campaign-multiplayer would have been if the story had just a little bit of game-system backing it. How hard would it be to give a team a 10 second head-start if they managed to evacuate the majority of their team in the last mission. Or maybe because they won the hardpoint mission previously, they get more spectres in the next. Maybe this stuff is going on, but if so it should be more explicit. My favorite mission is the last one because it explicitly states that if you capture a point, your team gets more spectres. Plus

in that mission you can hack spectres and they will follow you around like a little robot posse

[Badfinger]

You don't need to spoil that. You can ALWAYS hack spectres, and they are indeed a rad as hell posse.

[JonCole]

One thing I've come to learn recently is that in attrition mode, you should basically prioritize attacking AI over almost anything else. I've had a ridiculous amount of success with this strategy - kill every grunt on your radar and hack every spectre you lay eyes on, then you have a veritable army of spectres, you're earning attrition points far faster than people who prioritize pilots, and you're getting your Titans much faster than anyone else at which point it's then in your interest to target Titans/pilots. Also, don't disregard AI when you're in a Titan - if you can hit a group of AI as soon as they're deployed, that's a quick ~5-10 attrition points.

[Spenny]

It's probably a good idea to kill all the enemy things.

 

I noticed a strategy where by people in Stryders would just dash all over the place getting trample kills, or maybe that was just me getting trampled a few times and not really a focused strategy.

[clyde]

If I hack a spectre and then the other team kills my new robot buddy, I wonder if they get attrition points.

[Architecture]

One thing I've come to learn recently is that in attrition mode, you should basically prioritize attacking AI over almost anything else. I've had a ridiculous amount of success with this strategy - kill every grunt on your radar and hack every spectre you lay eyes on, then you have a veritable army of spectres, you're earning attrition points far faster than people who prioritize pilots, and you're getting your Titans much faster than anyone else at which point it's then in your interest to target Titans/pilots. Also, don't disregard AI when you're in a Titan - if you can hit a group of AI as soon as they're deployed, that's a quick ~5-10 attrition points.

Moreover, you're likely to encounter pilots if you stand your ground and pick off grunts and spectres from a fixed point--the AI fodder tends to crop up around the human players and acts as sort of an early warning system. Obviously, you're still contending with rogue snipers and pilots running around like mad, but playing a lane (for lack of a better term) does tend to move you up the ladder.

 

The more I play, the more I'm almost entirely convinced that the smart pistol is the greatest thing ever.

[Dewar]

While the smart pistol might not be the most efficient killing machine ever, the fact that it tells you whenever any enemy is within the targeting range and bracket is a godsend. The little triangles over your allies' heads just don't show up enough to tell you what's a threat and what isn't. I find myself trying to mark enemies, BF4 style, just so I can see them a little clearer.

[JonCole]

I guess I need to give the Smart Pistol a go, I've certainly seen some players use it to great effect. I do think it requires some degree of mastery of the traversal, because closing that gap faster than a person can shoot you or run away from you seems critical.

 

I've had the most success with the shotgun and SMG, mostly because I find that getting up close and personal is more effective than long-range for my particular skillset.  I imagine I'll also like the semi-automatic rifle as well just because guns of that type tend to be high damage per shot.

[clyde]

I use the smart-pistol then pick up a rifle off of the first grunt I kill. As I run, I take out pilots with the rifle and pull out the smart-pistol for pockets of minions.

[Badfinger]

If I hack a spectre and then the other team kills my new robot buddy, I wonder if they get attrition points.

I've been told but cannot confirm that after you hack an enemy spectre it's effectively "dead" and no more points to be had.

[clyde]

This is pretty much what it feels like when I'm running with my spectre-posse:

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=baJpkNC_ilY

[Architecture]

I've had the most success with the shotgun and SMG, mostly because I find that getting up close and personal is more effective than long-range for my particular skillset.  I imagine I'll also like the semi-automatic rifle as well just because guns of that type tend to be high damage per shot.

I ended up not liking the G2A4 as much as I expected, and I'm the kind of player who stuck with the FAL and M14 through numerous iterations of CoD. I did unlock the match trigger for the weapon (which enables you to fire as fast as you can click, sacrificing accuracy in the process), but have yet to use it. The first SMG seems useless to me, and I've never been much of a shotgun guy in competitive multiplayer (save for Bad Company 2, where the Neostead 2000 with slug rounds was impossibly overpowered). So far I've had the best results with the R-101C and smart pistol.

[prettyunsmart]

Wow. So I just got in a couple of games of Capture the Flag, and I think I have a new favorite video game thing (at least for the moment). There's nothing quite like stashing a titan near the enemy base, wallrunning in, grabbing the flag, hopping back in the titan, activating the dash core, and getting back to base for a capture. It brings me back to frantic flag running in UT, but with giant robots.

[Badfinger]

Capture The Flag is excellent. The map design that make all the traversal incredible is also a crazy bonus to playing CTF.

[JonCole]

Okay, I'm now sold on the smart pistol. I had an attrition game where I got MVP and killed 40+ minions. I also ended up having 5 Titan kills, mostly because I kept racking up Titans to call in. Great stuff.